Cloud Uptake Set to Explode Across Africa

A study by Cisco and World Wide Worx shows that organization across Africa are posed to make considerable investments in cloud services come 2014. The study “Cloud in Africa: Reality Check 2013” was conducted across 3 countries: South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. 57% of the respondents expressed high confidence in the reliability and security of the cloud with only 10% being negatively disposed towards cloud solutions. Currently 50% of medium and large business already utilize cloud services in South Africa, 48% in Kenya and 36% in Nigeria. Cisco projects that Nigeria will dramatically overtake South Africa with 80% of the country’s businesses adopting cloud services by 2014.

Storage remains the most popular cloud solution at 28% among the surveyed companies. Currently the Private Cloud is the solution of choice in organizations at 25%, the trend will continue with Private Cloud accounting for 32% of the deployments in 2014. The study projects that other cloud deployments in the continent are set to grow with Hybrid Cloud at 18% and Public Cloud at 16% in 2014.

Approximately 17 percent of data center traffic will be fueled by end users accessing clouds for web surfing, video streaming, collaboration and connected devices, all of which contribute to the Internet of Everything, which is the networked connection of people, data, process and things.

“People all over the world continue to demand the ability to access personal, business and entertainment content anywhere on any device, and each transaction in a virtualized, cloud environment can cause cascading effects on the network,” said David Meads, Cisco’s Vice President for Africa. “Because of this continuing trend, we are seeing huge increases in the amount of cloud traffic globally within, between and beyond data centers over the next four years.”

From a regional perspective, the Cisco Global Cloud Index predicts that through 2017, the Middle East and Africa will have the highest cloud traffic growth rate (57 percent CAGR), followed by Asia Pacific (43 percent CAGR) and Central and Eastern Europe (36 percent CAGR).